lincoln will always be at the top of the mountain. >> why do you think that is? >> he had the biggest challenge of any president. he had a country divided in half. he presided over a civil war were so mad 50,000 people lost their lives. he abolished slavery, the great tarnish our nation that it didn't present for over 100 years. so for him to get rid of slavery and to bring the country together after the civil war is what puts them at the top of the mountain. >> good evening, everyone and welcome to the center for strategic and international studies. andrew schwartz, senior vice president at csi yes and it's my honor to host james kitfield and redoing this in partnership with the center for the study of the american, the center for the study of the presidency and congress were just talking upstairs.

one of the really wonderful things about the center for the study of the presidency and congress and csis is there both founded by the late david asher. for those of you who knew him, he was a remarkable remarkable man who we all loved. he lived to see this building, which was really terrific. he started csis over 50 years ago with admiral burke. four years we were at 18th and gay and less opulent surroundings to say the least -- >> that is putting it mildly spirit we would've been doing this book taught in the basement with no windows. we would never have gotten here though without david. it's an honor to be working with the center for the study of the presidency and congress. and, of course, at my friend james kitfield here it was

written another remarkable book. i don't have to redo his bio. you all know it. he's one of the best, best military reporters to ever work in this town. he is one of the best authors. he has the respect of the people that he interviews and writes about and the respect of his readers and the respect of tele- journalist. >> thanks for saying that. >> certainly of the policy community who consider him to be someone of, just impeccable talent and character. we've all learned quite a lot from james kitfield over the years. the book is terrific. i know that all of you, the holidays are coming up so don't buy one, by two. for those of you at home who are watching on the webcast or on c-span, they are available on amazon. they are available wherever they sell books. it's a marvelous book and i

strongly recommend it. everyone at csis will get through it by the end of the year, i have no doubt of that. thank you for coming out on another call meeting in washington. nothing much going on here. it's all quiet but the sun was shining today and the sun is always shining on it over here at csis. we are a bipartisan institution that aims to be constructive on policy, and that's what we hope to talk about tonight, to learn from james is book and we hope to take your questions. so get your questions in mind. we are going to get to that in just a few minutes. why don't you tell us, why the name of the book and what was the origin of the book? >> i picked "twilight warriors" when i was looking for something to convey the fact that this conflict we're in, this conflict, global terrorist movement, it's not a night or day, it's neither a victory nor defeat.

it is neither war or criminality it's a hybrid of it and it's this idea of a perpetual conflict. that's how i picked the name. the genesis of it was causing a lot of reporting about 2011 which i thought was a watershed year for the post-9/11 war on terror, if you will. obama came into office. in the first two years he launched more drone strikes against terrorists, targeting terrorists in pakistan and the bush administration had that in eight years. the joint special operations command had launched triple the number of strikes that it is launched each month. in a space of year, 2010-2011 we killed more than half of the top 20 al-qaeda lieutenants, senior-level leaders. in that you were also killed the two most wanted terrorist in the

world, osama bin laden and anwar al-awlaki who was the head of al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. we reached level of effectiveness i've never seen, i covered everything that happened after 9/11 including the wars in iraq and afghanistan. something was going on, and same year, not by coincidence president obama decides to pull all our troops out of iraq. he ran the next year, the president who killed osama bin laden, the commander-in-chief who killed osama bin laden and ended the post-9/11 wars, so clearly we were, and then he gave a speech in the second term in 2013 where he basically tried to define the war on terror as had been over and with a desperate al-qaeda that we could now put it into a more normal threat level and get on with wide temperature of american foreign policy, all

very laudable goals. it seemed to be there something going on that we're going to trust this new kind of targeted terrorist killings as being a main strategy against the war on terror, that we could do that. that struck me as interesting or two fronts, one of which we did know much about this targeted program. it was cloaked in almost total secrecy. a few years ago denial, not denied that failed to knowledge they were behind these drone strikes people were seeing. >> and there were no leaks. >> very few leaks. we were relying on this new style of operations that we knew almost nothing about. so as a journalist that really intrigued me. because of my reporting i also knew that this idea that al-qaeda was done and that we could sort of downgrade it to sort of a normal sort of threat, was not shared by a lot of the top intelligence guys, a top

guys who did the targeted killing program. they killed a lot of leaders, the group persisted for those two recent it seemed to me it was worth a deep dive to understand this method of operation but also to understand the enemy and understand whether these wars were really over. >> how did we get so successful? >> it turns out, you mention prodigal soldiers. we look at the force that fought in the persian gulf war that was with active. we were still in sort of a post vietnam malaise about the motor being not very effective. if you remember that you do that was goldwater-nichols where they basically forced the service to stop this competition between each other and to be joint. that was a key part of the military being more effective. it turns out with joint special operations comman command task , malta 82 task forces in iraq and

afghanistan almost perfect crucibles for forging a synergistic model of operations to combine the skill set of intelligence agencies, joint special operations, direct action units, law enforcement agencies like the fbi, the dea and others. they all operate under one roof any wartime and vibrant and sometimes they were desperate circumstances and they broke down all the barriers and billy came up with an operational style whose son was better, whose whole was much better than the sum of all its parts. >> but the record number of targets that they hit, did that surprise you? >> it did, and it turns out, one of the facets of this joint special operations command, these task forces, was that they had this really incredible temple of operations and that was because they had turned the

usual intelligence gathering equation on its head. usually intelligence gathering in ford's operations. they gather intelligence, use it to do operations. they had gotten to the cycle of operations, find, fix, finish, exploit intelligence that you gather at these houses and analyze. that got, the tempo of that was so industrial level that they start, every target that they fill in on gave the more targets, and just reached a virtual cycle. they were getting inside the decision-making loop of al-qaeda in the way that made their leaders are very vulnerable. >> let's talk about, there's some news in the book and is not without controversy. >> good. >> and it's fascinating. in the book you talk about officials, namely general flynn who conclude in 2012 at the

obama administration was seeking to suppress intelligence on islamic extremist threats in order to justify walking away from iraq, syria, afghanistan and other countries that have fallen apart while he was president. tell us about that spirit that's what of the central tensions i talked about earlier. there was this feeling amongst, and flynn was the chief intelligence officer in iraq and afghanistan so he was very close to the fight. >> flynnflynn, whose name is upr several jobs in -- >> he isn't all-caps\all caps senior national security advisor, alter ego, if you will. so he was a defense intelligene agency he was seen intelligence about the growth of the threat from isis and other groups. a lot from syria but other places as well. between, he showed me a chart, 2004-2014. the number of islamic extremist groups have double at the time

with the narrative was threats going away, we can go back to a new normal. and he saw as set intelligence without the chain of command they got delivered and diluted until, because he read the presidential daily brief, a lot of the threat warnings were being sort of diluted out of the intelligence assessment. subs currently we have now learned there was a pentagon inspector general investigation where 50 analysts in central command made the same complaint, that the rather alarmist intelligence analysis on the growth of isis somehow disappeared. in that case it was at the top level of the u.s. central command where they pointed the finger. it's one of these things when a narrative is coming out of the white house, i'm not saying, flynn is very upset about that. he thinks it's one of the reasons he didn't get to service third year at the defense intelligence agency. just did a profile on him if anyone wants an in-depth story on that. he felt frustrated that what he

thought was a growing threat was being basically perceived by the public as a dying threat and explain why the white house sort of we one district that caused a lot of tension. flynn represents, that's not everyone in intelligence but flynn represented a core group who felt that the enemy was not dead, that the enemy is really, all these groups fly this black granite whether al-qaeda, isis or taliban rauscher bob or al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. the threat was a garlic and he felt the white house was not really explain that threat to the public and user frustrated. >> why did he think that? >> the intelligence that he saw wasn't getting into the pressures of daily brief. the president speeches were

talking about basically this seminal counterterrorism speech in may 2013 was basically describing al-qaeda is decimated, our troops are coming home, we can basically rely on this drone program and keep america safe and that's the new normal. he fought back against that. he didn't believe that. >> easy still fighting the fight to some extent? >> he still believes that. he's going to be a very senior person so yeah, i suspect one of things will see from a top administration is, talk about this threat as being bigger than just isis or al-qaeda. it's an ideology and were ever it raises its head and forms a group that puts its black man in territory that will probably be fighting the group soon or later because it's thei very anti-wes. it's a virulently intolerant. not all of other religions but also of different strains of islam like shia. i felt likes to massacre shia.

i think you'll see very much a different narrative coming out of the trump white house. >> what will that narrative be in terms of fighting counterterror? >> you know, i don't want to speak for general mike flynn. the narrative is going to be this war is not over. quite i'll see if you see what president obama has done in the last year, a year and half ago he was talking on isis as the jv team of terrorism. he's talking about two years ago about -- he's talking a generational struggle. if anyone was reluctant to put to spec and a rock it is present obama but he did it because you realize what a threat this was. he has frozen the troop withdrawal in a consistent because the taliban is coming back. there's a general consensus to this conflict is generational. it's a different kind of conflict.

it's not one you can say we can walk away from because we one. the enemy gets -- this enemy has decided to keep fighting. >> can you walk us through the transformation of u.s. counterterrorism network and its operational style? book talks about the partnerships. >> those joint task forces, joint special operations command under very patient leadership with stanley mcchrystal and now scott miller who is former delta force commander, that the cells -- the military, finding synergistic style of operations that merges all the talents into a synergistic skill set, that now has been expanded to our global counters and network. if you go to the national counters and center which is right out here near tyson said,

it's like this mother lode, this network they have formed and tushman they designed their flat organizations. if you go to the major notes like national counters and center, they have multi agency inside a national counterterrorism center, they called in pursuit groups that look like a j sock task force. if you go all over the country, joint tears and task forces but combined intelligence law enforcement and inside america, not military but combined of the committees. that is become the norm. wherever globals and network of characters and we have j sock back in iraq but the once anorak and use the global sort of a technological revolution which is this global communication system that ties this network together and were the frontline delta force team in iraq right now in irbil has hundreds

analyst scattered all over the world analyzing the drone surveillance better drones flown from arizona, analyzed at norfolk what they call the defense, grant system and they call it remote split operation but is greater and network that in turn, turns its focus on anyplace on the earth, within a matter of seconds. that is something as recent as desert storm it took three days to do bomb damage assessment. it includes all the satellites and all the drones but it is tied into a network that looks like what stan mcchrystal and those guys graded, just expanded out and talk to the people in that network, all the people, from these agencies who rotated through joint task forces, j sock, have risen to the whole system and their working at national counters and center, working in all these different notes so there's this experience level.

these guys only no working together at it pumps through the entire global u.s. characters and network. >> tell us more about that. it's a generally understood before 9/11 the cia and the fbi had considerable barriers between them, to say the least, and it hampered in their cooperation. the you describe has really changed. how has it changed and how is the removal of barriers been a positive development? >> you raised an interesting point because i done those stories. the fbi and the cia, joint task forces counter drug, whatever comes used to joke check your guns a at the door otherwise thy will shoot each other. the cultures were so antagonistic to each other. the fbi, they beat cop kind of image. they were like, when they started these joint task forces

they literally had their workstations sort of isolated by crime scene tape so the other guys wouldn't come over and look over the shoulder what they were doing. a national counters and, they brought all these agencies together, they had like 15 different computer systems on their workstation, not sharing with each other. at these task forces finally say look, guys, you have to put all your sources on this blackboard so everyone knows each other sources. when they did that and you had to make a promise you can't poach each other sources, they realize some of the same sources were being used by two or three or four agencies and telling them different things, contradictory things, depending on what they wanted to hear, but they were getting paid. so it went from there to a very desperate fight whether all finally said to win this fight we have to work together. that was a huge change and it is now, like i said, percolated up

throughout the entire system. so working together. the post-9/11 commission report and all the reforms broke down, allowed a lot of that sharing that was previously from the church committee back in the 19 \70{l1}s{l0}\'70{l1}s{l0} that wasn't even allowed. our intelligence sharing is eons above what was at 9/11. one of the race of what to write the book is i think that's what good looks like candidat an adus to lose that. >> so now we have yale and allow state playing on the same team. what did you discover as you peel back some of these veils behind the terrorist targeting programs? >> well, one of the things i discovered was a much more granular understanding of the enemy. one of the fascinating parts of the book is where, you know, the fbi realized that it's job is to protect americans and americans are being killed ids ied cells

in kabul. so brian macauley for profile in the book is head of the, he was the lead at the time speeded tell us who brian macauley is. he is one of the unsung, people come he's not a name, not a household name. >> he's an astounding special agent who got very early on one of copies one of the patient leaders who said we can't afford to be fighting each other. we have an enemy we have to fight so we need to work together. there was only a handful of fbi guys in afghanistan. he brings in more than 100 and goes out to these ied cells that are killing american soldiers. trying to understand these ied cells, improvised explosive devices, he brings an a behavioral science guys, the serial killer profiles from quantico. he has been interview failed suicide bombers. their best didn't go off for the

lost their nerve or whatever. these expert profilers interview these guys for weeks and they understood how these guys, most of them fairly low level hasn't guys in pakistan in the afghan refugee camps who were radicalized by one of these radical mosques in the tribal areas of pakistan, and basically just brought along all the way, told, they're going to go to heaven if they do this operation. their families are paid a certain amount of money. when they were brought to these logistic lines all the way to cobble with the handler when we meet up with the guy who makes the best or the vehicle, ied. they understood, they got to understand the enemy at a real granule level and understood the element to that enemy but also understood one of the profilers told me they could feel this

hand manipulating these guys and it was very sophisticated because if it was someone who is an educated and not particularly capable, they would send them after a soft target. if he found some more educated and more capable of there would put them in the team to do more hard targets, kind of commando things like you sign paris and brussels. if i was picking a team to do this i would pick exactly these guys and a site in exactly the task they were being given. so very sophisticated enemy who understands how to recruit, how to radicalize and how to deploy these guys and every expert manner who to pick they would pick hasn't guys to do, you know, they would get children, convince a six year old to suicide vest and told him to spray flowers. these are incredibly cynical and

brutal people. they would also pick more educated people like bin laden did with the crew that did 9/11. you saw these are highly educated guys. they could pull off a complex attack like 9/11, or guys not capable to do that, we will just run him up to replace the candidate or something like that and have them blow himself up spirit why did you focus on the u.s. interrogation program? >> a couple reasons. i was in iraq when abu ghraib broke, and saw how that upended our whole operation there. all the trust american troops and leaders ha have built up wih the iraqis started to go out the window because of the humiliating treatment. recruiting, and incredible recruiting poster for al-qaeda and iraq, and that the numbers to prove. that's not an assumption, that's a fact.

i also was embarrassed as an american. by the way way, i talked to thes who did these interrogations, and the enhanced interrogation techniques created a lot of corrupted intelligence. if you're getting water boarded 80 times you will tell someone to take stock of what you think you want to hear, which isn't necessarily the truth. there is one case, the first make al-qaeda operative that was captured after 9/11, he was the only one who is actually used both techniques. the fbi can cut to them first and did a traditional weeks worth of interrogation where they went its confidence and break his story down, very patiently pull her story, break it down until he gets off. and then the cia came in and eventually did the enhanced interrogation techniques for more than three weeks and more than 80 waterboarding cases. the cia got nothing out of him. the fbi cap\cap the fact that

the masculine was a 9/11 and josé padilla. to me it was a perfect case because i still see polls wheree americans think that only did torture work and apparently our new president think so, but it's okay. okay. i think it's wrong on both spent the culture between the fbi and cia had a different opinion on that spirit this is interesting point because one of the things that was so critical about the synergy that was created, these joint task forces once understand what each agency brought to the table. the fbi brings these guys of an anything criminals and getting them to spill the beans. that is a core capable of fbi. cia doesn't interrogate anyone. they have these two air force psychologists who themselves have never interrogated one, to design this enhanced interrogation protocol that was built on basically a program that we trained american troops how to resist with the communist

regimes would do when they would capture, like north koreans. that was the perfect example why they didn't understand who brought what to the table. that cia those brilliant stuff in terms of intelligence analysis and that makes it very clear, when they were working together wit the fbi would get information and the fbi is not particularly well-suited to track that information didn't pick the cia would come back in a day with all their analytical capability essays talk about this guy because we looked at all the travel, et cetera, and that's how they got josé padilla. you have to understand who brings what to the table. cia does not have a skill set, an integral skill set of interrogating people. it's just not something to do much of spirit what did we learn collectively from interrogations of this linux pressuring islamist extremist? >> we learned their networks for one.

they did break this guy down and we've gotten great intelligence from a lot of the interrogation pick the template the design, the fbi from interviewing the serial killer guys come interviewing the behavioral science guys can interviewing would be as suicide bombers is middle a template of interrogation, understand the motivation of an islamic extremist as long as he brings some question with hymns, and use that as a template to interrogate or interview the would-be times square bomber, faisal a shot, the would-be new york subway bomber. >> so they use this template of what they have learned to sort of break these guys that in interrogation we learned this as a very sophisticated terrorist massacre learned they are very ideologically driven and their ideology is anti-western and

this sloppy ideology violence by its very nature. you get a sense of the enemy but a sense of also his networks because if they give up names and insert to make connections and you can start to flush out what their networks look like. >> you think the new style of counterterrorism operations that you describe in the book will survive the end of the post 9/11 wars in iraq and in afghanistan? >> one of the reasons i wrote the book is because i think it needs to and the signs are not great to be honest with you. we have gone into a postwar mindset in this country where we are getting our military readiness with sequestered. what happened to mike flynn, he was asked by the secretary to come back from war and to put a more wartime ethos in and was

not allowed to finish the job because it was too disruptive. to me that was a bad sign. these guys coming back from the war were kind of amazed at how the country had moved on. they feel like the conflict is still going. i wrote recently in yahoo! news case where ryan mcauley, controversycontroversy, state dt calls them up about hillary clinton e-mail. ..

real-time regional gateway, really sophisticated geolocation , capabilities really sophisticated algorithms to query telephone metadata. they are saying their threat between not an encryption, we are as a society going to allow companies with the more you can break into. this model will be less good. no question about that. >> let's go to some of your questions. my colleagues can pass the microphone around. questions? don't be shy. i know you've got russians. there's one of her year after year. >> thank you.

thank you for the top. >> tell us who you are. >> i am with tsi s. at the i.t. department. some of specialization has been spent in cultures and policy since 9/11, but i would look at counterterrorism on the countries. with the entire without they are of how to do with terrorism and away of everyday society given what has happened in paris and brussels recently appeared what do you think the common man on the streets rather than specialists in this field? >> good question. for one thing i think what paris and brussels deal is that the

intelligence -- intense intelligence -- intelligence sharing review does not characterize this model. so they don't talk to each other like our agencies do. so you have a very big problem for a terrorist comes in through greece or turkey and then goes to germany or brussels and under friends. he's crossing many international borders in agencies that don't cost very little. most of the european citizens don't have to have visas to come to this country. europe needs to learn from this model themselves and really get over their intelligence agencies here that's number one. i also learned you have to address radicalization to some degree. you may so i saw the united kingdom arrests on the

journalists. i live and die by free speech. but there's always a limit on free speech and inciting violence and there's a chapter in the book with an african-american kid from a middle-class family in tennessee became the first to launch a terrorist attack inside the united states after 9/11. this case is so typical. he got in trouble with the law and a place where he was troubled and reached out his uncle was a muslim and so he went to a mosque that happened to have a sloppy fundamentalist preacher who looked than men and send them to yemen to finish in school, got arrested and spent time in prison. a lot of these guys spent their masters in jihadist i'm where

it's a perfect breeding ground for terrorism. that includes south lake erie, zarqawi in a jordan prison. but we had him in our prison. he just touched all of those things that you can see the process of radicalization that if you don't set the next wave is being creative as we sit here and talk. question back there. yes in the purple. >> hi, i have a question. >> you have a good excuse. >> there is something that's always been curious about about than nature of al qaeda and iss.

it has been discussed a lot that al qaeda was much more difficult to penetrate with their relationships and networks. and nice to see how this humongous influx of foreign fighters and kids growing up to like video games. so do you think that iss has better penetrated by human than al qaeda given the opportunity because it feels like it would be easier to penetrate than it was to penetrate al qaeda and if the penetration is happening, do you anticipate the result: made in sometime in the near future? >> that's a good point. al qaeda was harder to penetrate because they were much more careful about their bedding. they opened up the gates and come to the caliphate and 35,000

foreign fighters answered that call. there's pros and cons to each side. al qaeda had a lot longer to develop with very little harassment from anyone else you can afford to to be a little more careful. prices developed very quickly to be very ambitious very early on. they are more open to infiltration. i honestly don't know the answer to that. i would say that it certainly hasn't been perfect infiltration because we've been surprised with some really ugly surprises like the paris attack, brussels attack. rather than being the jv team of terrorism, isis is to me like al qaeda 3.0. these are learning organizations and related that people share lessons for over a decade.

they learn from al qaeda or osama bin laden have the strategy of attacking the west brings you sort of the point of the wrong which is money, prestige recruits. they learn from al qaeda in the arabian peninsula spirit a lot of these groups are very sophisticated recruitment and inspiring though most of long distances, both of them have online magazine with isis and they learn from al qaeda and iraq just as their wanton brutality that plays well. of all the terrorist groups, al qaeda and iraq was by far the most brutally willing to massacre civilian with tens of thousands of iraqi, most of the shiite.

isis does the same thing. we've seen brutalities to a whole new level. i think isis is al qaeda three-point out and now we have more before they lose their terrorist order. i'm not sure if we've infiltrated it. it's not nearly where it should be because we've been a problem so many times. >> of the journalists and i wrote a thousand years ago. i also haven't read your book yet. let me ask you two questions. one is in this book do you cover your cooperation between the united states and all of the other major allies and how it's worked out and the related question is now the tribe has been the president may last for

almost 48 hours, do you have any thoughts on how this is going to change the tribe administration. >> the joint task force in iraq and afghanistan included coalition partners. mike flynn was investigated from the inspector general's office because the british commanders had american units which was kind of ridiculous. we had american units underneath them in regions of afghanistan. i covered that cooperation in terms of going deep into our intelligence agencies and european or otherwise. bcm, australia, the britain, ourselves. there is very close cooperation. but it follows up quickly with that. we saw how the germans were surprised. i'm sorry, your second question was tribe.

mike flynn is terms alter ego and i've interviewed him many times to know him pretty well. he views this as a connect site. his words to me were everybody can talk about the detonated core al qaeda. to me i think he's onto something did all of these groups and people talk about the competition and al qaeda and isis. this had. this having any difference in the worldview. and so, i'm glad the counterterrorism people are afraid to get this out of the way of an eventual merging of al qaeda and isis which could still happen. the poor taliban or al-shabaab for the affiliates that came were former al qaeda affiliate. so i think it's not helpful to think of these groups as distinguish small groups, the

problem is gone. it's a pantheon of like-minded of shared intelligence, shared lessons learned and common ideology. i think usc trump -- that would be part of his secret plan to view it that way. i know that's how mike flynn thinks. >> max, i work here in the building. questioned about the tribe administration. what are the most critical counterterrorism positions that donald is going to be filling in du have any thought on who might be filling those positions? >> i don't. i've been trying to find a media outlet. i don't think they know themselves quite honestly.

they would like to speculate the best game in town. the key positions for counterterrorism at the white house counterterrorism chief, lisa monaco. this person is the presidents go to person on terrorism, so that's a key position. headed the national counterterrorism center is also key. the head of the defense -- dni, director of national intelligence. it is key because he has to keep focus on the big intelligence picture, but also has to stay focused on the terrorism threat. i think he's been very good. those are the big ones i think for chair is said and of course the military position -- so much

is around operations command. that is our direct action military counterterrorism group. the military has three-star generals. but those positions are achieved. the military will signal that the people are who fill that position. but those are the big ones. and i would just be guessing if i say i have any idea who will pick. van anonymous gentleman. >> i think she whispers. >> by name is sarah thompson at the state department. adequate question about the characterization of this conflict and the sense of an ideological war and the terminology is supporting the connotations and would she then

characterized it by some other terminology or adjusted very conflict because i think the terminology definitely then shapes the mentality of what you're going into which then affects the entire approach. and sorry i guess it's not a clear question. that should change how we approach it. >> you now, the bush administration didn't say much either. they also understood that as a negative thing that goes along with calling a guy. the obama administration has been very good to say that because it doesn't want to tire of the wider muslim community.

as a journalist though, i don't think you can deny the components of this. the journalists i try to be as clear as i can. there's something about naming the enemy and understanding because it leads to for instance if you think it's just another terrorist group from when you the terrorist group with al qaeda's decimated problem over. the problem is not over because the ideology grows in certain kinds of condition and commissions of the arab spring were all over the place and doubled in size. i am sympathetic to the president not wanted to say that an empire with journalists and other people talking about the exact nature of it. i was very disturbed when donald trump started saying ban all muslims. that's exactly the reason why the president didn't want to

prove some demagogue would pick up on that entire bowl of religion which is super and held full because that leads right into the enemy's narrative of war against the west. as a journalist we need to understand the nature of the enemy and it does have an ideology and i would hope we could be sophisticated enough to understand the politics. i go back and forth en masse. there is something important about understanding the enemy and call it what it is. but if you take it too far, it can be very unhelpful. we've got to be a little more sophisticated about how we talk about this. diplomacy is the front lines. i understand that the state department might be very reticent to get into that kind of description for the pentagon were talking about this tribe. i want to hear understanding

specifically. if you are not specific to my u.k. and lay down some bad assumption like these are discrete groups and went to defeat them, they are discrete at. as part of a wider movement. >> next tuesday at november 15th tennessee sis will be releasing our commission uncovering for extremism. it is chaired by former prime minister tony blair and former secretary of defense leon panetta. look for that with a lot of your questions and addresses the language of the root causes and addresses a template designed every year for the next administration to look at in terms of what are they going to do to counter violent extremism so of course we will present the next administration in the next generation of leaders in europe

as well. >> as commissary. i promise you. >> i just want to go further than what she asked them a question. you talk about radicalization. you talk about ideology. the united states has been occupied iraq and afghanistan almost 15 to 16 years. it now, i was born in india and we know how we thought the british in that occupied the country for almost 100 years. we had people doing the same thing what al qaeda is doing and isis is doing. and we have people trying to work with the enemy hand in hand to paralyze them and working with them trying to stop them wherever we can so that you could throw them out.

so those afghans and those iraqis consider american presidents for all this. as a foreign intervention. foreigners must leave. let us fight among ourselves whether al qaeda has other citizen or that prime minister. who is the winner? so given that if the russians are occupying this country for 15 years and dividing each other, fighting each other, we could do the same thing. so what's wrong with that? we've got to figure out a way to get out. the ideology of the change. >> i take your point. and sponsor a foreign occupying force in a muslim land.

even a nationalist outbreak against us for that. point well taken. however, i would point out we didn't occupy afghanistan in the 1990s than it is given basis to train until america appeared that's true. we did not occupy afghanistan. because of -- sorry? i'm going to your point by occupation. the long history of american cause the which we don't have time for. we tried -- in afghanistan, the taliban led al qaeda build bases to attack west in 9/11. taliban is making a comeback in afghanistan. if you don't keep the taliban it

was destroyed when the biggest base since 9/11. there's no easy answer for this. i don't think occupied a bunch of countries is the answer. he tried to ignore a system so they took over our serious instead of launching attacks in paris and brussels. i don't think occupation is the answer but i don't think ignoring the problem solved it either. we tried that in the problem still persists. >> either. my name is josh. thank you very much for the top. very interesting. i work as an analyst for the canadian eggs. thank you for the comment on the toilet soldiers and the operation mozilla iraq. >> i've read about -- i was over

a month ago with the chairman joint chiefs of staff. the template you are seeing to your question of occupation, very like the footprint and afghanistan and iraq from the very smallest area. the template is to use the skill set of what i talked about in the discussions in the book, the joint special operations command develop into proxy forces on the ground fighting for their own country under a land. we are bringing the things that were its best, which is advanced intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, special forces strike teams which has killed more than 120 isis leaders. command-and-control and the kurdish -- marco forces, iraqi security forces to serious kurdish forces in the area.

we are doing the same thing in somalia bring in all of the skill sets to the african union force tried to stabilize somalia. that the template in that occupation but to find partners who we can support themselves want to fight. there aren't that many people in the world who really want to live in a seventh century fundamentalist islamist society anymore. we have partners out there that we have to be willing to help them. we learned the skill thank you so to empowering forces on the ground and that you see in iraq as soon and it's pretty powerful. it takes time because of that american troops you can do it a lot quicker. as we said, a big american footprint. time for one more question. it's

>> thanks very much. many of us steve credit within sight of land. my question is about cost of military operations. i know its issue dated to drive a national debt and everything. do you think this new model can be a more cost as a means of exerting u.s. force around the world and if so, how? >> i think it's not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than large ground forces occupying forces. it's a lot less vocally. because the economy and the cold war where we had lots of little things going on putting aside the more the iraq war. they're kind of discrete

operations. i think you have to raise the cost of doing not versus the cost of not doing not. it's a suppose everyone else in this room does, too. the cost of letting these groups get powerful into train. we know what happened there. it's not a theoretical problem. paris knows, nice guys come in new york knows, washington knows. we know what will happen if these groups are uncontested. each of the cost of these operations on a pretty continual basis against not doing it and letting these groups argue even more costly. quite honestly we are not spending any things in terms of defense right now than the cold war average in terms of gdp. in terms of gdp this is not a burden that we can't dare.

they change the political dynamic they are in a very worrisome way. there's huge cost of not confronting these threats, too. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> people created racist ideas to justify the slave trade you people created racist ideas to justify slavery. i found people created racist

ideas to justify segregation. i found people continued to now justify mass incarceration. i'm finding that we had these policies in place. we had these does their use in place and people were creating racist ideas over the course of american history to justify and rationalize pure and then i caused you and i having consumed these ideas to look out in america and d.c. disparages thirsty people enslaved for d.c. 2 billion black people in jail or to see hundreds of thousands of people in chains coming over to america can do that is normal. that is the power that racist ideas have had over the course of american history -- try to chronicle that from the beginning, that these ideas have been powerful enough to make us believe that inequities are

normal. .. ter middle east, what do you mean? >> well, i'm talking about a very large swath of the islamic world. i could have called it america's war in the middle east but it seems to me to use that narrower term really understates the expanse over which we have been involved, certainly includes places like afghanistan which doesn't fall in what we think of as the middle east. frankly now includes very large parts of central and western africa which again doesn't fall within the typical definition middle east.